


Ladybug's song

by laraceleste



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Heavy Angst, Kim and Nino know au, Ladybug!Nino, Nino and Marinette were childhood friends, and Kim and Marinette were childhood friend, angst no comfort, bff au, is it techically unrequited love if half of the love square is dead?, they're all childhood friends, this is actually pretty dark, who knows not me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-24 13:43:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21339187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laraceleste/pseuds/laraceleste
Summary: Marinette is dead and the world is worse for it.
Relationships: (Mentions:), Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Alya Césaire/Nino Lahiffe, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug & Lê Chiến Kim, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug & Lê Chiến Kim & Nino Lahiffe, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug & Nino Lahiffe
Comments: 17
Kudos: 295





	Ladybug's song

The thing about the Black Cat miraculous is that when it's wielder hurts their Ladybug no Miraculous Ladybug can fix it; and it's when the game changes and Marinette supposes Hawkmoth knows— because why else would every other akuma he sends out be mind control based —that she hands Nino a thick brand and clasp envelope full of letters. Letters to him and Kim and Alya and her parents and even two that are addressed to Tikki and Adrien; and Nino— who doesn't want it because he knows why she wrote those letters and she knows having them means having to face the fact that his best friend really thinks she's going to die one of these days —takes them.

Nino takes them because Marinette asks him too and he can't say no to her when she's there in front of him earnestly asking him to just do her this one favor and hold onto this clasped folder. Nino does it because he knows she comes to him and Kim after those fights— the ones where Chat Noir, under an akumas influence, hurts her —and there's some part of his seventeen year old brain that thinks he and Kim, as long as Tikki is guiding them, can patch her up and save her no matter what.

Nino takes the clasped folder and buried it in his underwear drawer, under his socks and boxers and that one shirt that constantly ends up in the drawers despite the shirt drawer being two down and he tried to forget about it, and some days he can, other days the knowledge that it's there is in the back of his mind, weighing him down like a heavy bass line.

**…**

It's sunny, from the moment Marinette wakes up late for class and all throughout the akuma fight and even afterwards when it hurts to breath and she feels like she's drowning— because even if she's on dry land the blood in her lungs is suffocating her and it is drowning her —and when she's running as fast as she can, in the opposite direction from Chat who with a beeping ring hadn't been able to stay around long enough to catch on to the fact that she's hurt and towards Kim's house the sun is out and it's beating down on her.

At first, back when Marinette was fourteen and her super suit was still new, she never really thought about the design, which is weird because she wants to become a fashion designer with her own household label and be known for her designs; but now, at seventeen she's thankful for the red and black spots because as long as you don't die while wearing it no one can tell you're bleeding.

She's two houses away then the beeping from her earrings become erratic.

Marinette lands on Kim's fire escape in a tangled mess of bloody limbs, her pink jeans are soaked red with blood and so is her shirt and Tikki is shrieking at the top of her tiny lungs. Kim is too. When he opens his window and pulls her in, he shrieks at Tikki to call Nino because he can't fix Marinette— "This is bad Tikki, like really bad! I can't fix her like this!" —but he also knows calling an ambulance would be giving Marinette up as Ladybug and he can't do that because if he does and she lives she's dead anyway.

Tikki dose and the tiny kwami still yelling— at Nino to get over to Kims and at Kim to lay Marinette down and put pressure on her wound —and Kim packs gauze on top of gauze trying to stunt the blood loss as Nino probably breaks every speeding law in Paris; because out of the three of them he's the one with both the license and van.

Marinette has neither and Kim only has the license but in that moment it wouldn't have mattered if Nino had to run the mile between his and Kim's house because nothing was stopping him from getting there.

"Hey Mari?" Kim asks and Marinette pale white and ashy looks at him. Kim's father died of cancer when he was young, his mother had given his hospice and Kim knew the dim look in Marinette's eyes because it's a look you never forget.

"Yeah Kim?"

"You can't leave me and Nino, it's the three of us Marinette, against everything." They had made that promise at nine years old and settled on a pinkie promise rather than the spit covered palms he'd suggested shaking on.

"It's not really my choice here Kim," she rasps back and the door flies open and reveals a panting Nino. He slides next to Marinette like he's stealing a base in kickball and she smiles. "Hey Nino."

"Holy fuck Nette," Ninos eyes are watering and he takes to holing down the bloody gauze as Kim rips apart a towel to pack on the wound. It's large and across her torso and Nino's not quite sure how Marinette survived up until that point but he doesn't care because she's alive and that's all that matters.

"Dollar for the swear jar," Marinette says.

"You can have my wallet of you make it through this Marinette." And maybe he says that because that's something along the lines of what they always say in movies when one character survives what they shouldn't and by saying that Marinette will somehow miraculously pull through. "Dollar for the swear jar Nino."

"Marinette," Tikki crows heartbrokenly. Marinette looks at Nino and she smiles, or at least she tries too because she's tired and hurting and she wants it to stop.

"Do you Nino-"

"Marinette what are you doing?" Kim hisses; he's panicking but he never slows, he just keeps trying to stop the blood flow.

"-Take and bare the responsibility of the Ladybug miraculous? Will you protect it and Tikki and Paris?" Ninos adam's apple bobs for a moment. Big, hot tears trail down his face.

"Yeah," he whispers. "I do, I promise." Because he can't say no to Nette, not when she's there in front of him dying, not when she's looking at him like she doesn't want to go but has too and this is just another responsibility she has to bare, like atlas.

"I relinquish you Tikki." The kwami disappears, Marinette's red earrings turn a dull black color and Marinette, with the ghost of a smile on her face, stops breathing. Kim lets out an inhuman howl and sobbing, Nino takes the earrings from Marinette.

**…**

Marinette's body is still warm when Nino takes her earrings, Kim is sobbing and maybe the neighbors have called the cops already, Nino doesn't know and at the moment he doesn't care. He pushes the dull studs through his unpierced ears and he doesn't even wince because the girl he's known since he was seven is on the floor dead in front of him.

Tikki reappears sobbing when she reappears.

Nino lost his parents when he was a kid and ever since than Marinette and Kim had been his family and now she's dead.

Nino gathers Marinette in his arms, he ignores the blood and he holds her the same way she used to hold him and Kim, flushed against her chest with her weirdly muscular arms around their shoulders and he begs for her to come back.

He begs, through the hot bubbling tears for her to wake up and that she has to come back because him and Kim can't function without her no more than she could have functioned without them. She doesn't; she lays there in his arms, dead.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng is dead and neither Nino or Kim can breath. They'd always done everything together before that so maybe if they're lucky, they'll follow after her.

They don't. They call the police instead because that's what you do when you're best friend is dead, and they tell the truth. Tikki says they can so when Sabrina's father Inspector Raincomprix arrives on the scene they tell him that Marinette, the girl he knew, had been Ladybug and the inspector pauses because the Marinette he'd known was scatterbrained and clumsy but she was good.

The inspector takes off his hat and he passes on word to the officers at the scene and everyone seems to still because Marinette had saved each and everyone of them at one point or another and when they carry her out they carry her out like they would one of their own; inspector Raincomprix's cap on her body.

"I have to let her parents know," Inspector Raincomprix says, his pen jammed against his notepad as they place Marinette's body in the back of the coroner's van. Nino and Kim quiver and sob. The inspector looks at the solemnly and he rests a hand on Kim's shoulder.

"Do the two of you know how-I thought Ladybug's cure solved everything."

"Not the damage done by Chat," Nino murmured. She always told Chat Noir to stop taking hits for her; if she got hit he could still snap her out of it but he never stopped. He never listened and now she was dead because some dumb kid in a cat suit couldn't listen.

"It's not Chats fault!" Kim hissed, Ninos not sure if its at the Inspector or at him, "Nette-" he choked and Nino let out another sob, "-She always made it clear that she never blamed him. It's Hawkmoths fault." _But Chat Noir still helped him kill her. Willingly or not what dose it matter,_ Nino thought bitterly, _Marinette's dead because of him._ The Inspector nodded stiffly.

"I need to let Mlle. and M. Dupain-Cheng know now, before the press finds out-"

"-Can we come?" Kim wondered, "To maman and papa's?" The Inspector blinks and pity over takes his face because in front of him aren't just two best friends; they're the deceased two brothers and he nods. Nino feels Tikki shake in the front pocket of his pants; and when he slides his hand in she holds it.

Inspector Raincomprix leads them to his car and it's only when they've pulled up outside of the Dupain-Cheng bakery that they realize Nino and Kim are covered in Marinette's blood. Nino throws up out the window and the inspector offers Kim the PPD windbreaker he had in his trunk and Nino the jacket off his back as both boys stuff their shirts into evidence bags.

When they enter Tom smiles at them, only to stop because it's clear that something's wrong.

"Sabine get out here!" Tom Dupain-Cheng calls, there's a note of panic in his voice and he moved around the counter and doesn't hesitate to take both Nino and Kim into his arms, crushing both boys against him.

"M. Dupain-Cheng, Mlle." Sabine Dupain-Cheng with the apron Marinette had made and gifted her last christmas still tied around her waist comes out back from the kitchen. "There's been an accident regarding your daughter."

Sabine moves, her arm winds around Toms, "What do you mean accident."

"I—there's never a good way to say this ma'am. I'm sorry." Tom shakes, he's already crying and Kim chokes on a sob. "You're daughter died earlier this evening."

Tom collapses, Sabine sort of just rocks there for a moment and when she asks what happens Nino steps forward, away from Tom and to her, he's wearing Marinette's earrings and Nino knows she won't take notice because of the miraculous but part of him wanted Sabine Dupain-Cheng too see just why her little girl died, because even as he wears them Nino doesn't see the point in his best friend losing her life over them. Ultimate power or not.

"Marinette was Ladybug," Nino says quietly and Tom looks up at the boy, Kim still in his arms, and blinks.

"What?"

"Marinette was Ladybug, she got hurt and Kim and I—we couldn't—I wasn't fast enough-" Nino squeezed his eyes shut because that's the truth, he wasn't fast enough to save Marinette, he didn't figure out a way to stop the blood loss and she died because he hadn't been enough.

He had let her die.

"No," Sabine denies, "Ladybug-Marinette was fourteen."

"We know," Nino says. Marinette had been fourteen, he was seventeen and all the others had been just as young. Ladybugs live a mayflies life and Nino knows the only reason she had passed on the earrings to him is because she hadn't realized it but when he'd been fifteen and Tikki had told the three of them about Joan and Hippolyta and all the others he'd realized that being Ladybug meant being handed a death sentence.

**…**

It's all over the news, _LADYBUG IS DEAD,_ and it's not Marinette's picture plastered next to the news anchors head and Nino breaths because Tom and Sabine Dupain-Cheng don't need that at the moment. They don't need people coming up to them asking about Marinette, trying to take anymore of them than they already had.

He doesn't need it either, neither dose Kim.

Alya calls and calls and it's only when he throws his phone in his closet that he hears him. Chat Noir, panicked and calling out for her.

"My Lady!" Nino hears and he meets Tikkis eyes. They're watery and she's still crying; so is Nino. "My Lady!"

"You need to let him know," Tikki tells him and Nino glares out the window because he doesn't care what Kim says or what Marinette would have said, it's Chat Noirs fault Marinette is dead.

"Why, she's dead because of him."

"My Lady, please!"

"Because it's the right thing to do," Tikki tells him and that's all he needs to move to his dressed and take out the clasped envelope because he's Ladybug now and Ladybug always does what's right, even if he doesn't want to.

"Tikki spots on."

**…**

Nino, in a suit that looked just like Marinette's, finds Chat on the Eiffel Tower and deep down Nino knows it's not Chats fault but when he looks at the blonde black cat he hates him, with every fiber of his being Nino hates him and he wants it to be Chat Noir laying in some Paris morgue and not Marinette because he can't imagine functioning without Marinette-but Chat? Nino hasn't the slightest inkling who he could be and in that moment he doesn't care, he doesn't want Marinette's dead, even at Chat Noirs expense.

"Who the hell are you?" Chat spits. It's clear he's been crying, his face is red and puffy and Nino doesn't care. He doesn't.

"I'm Ladybug," there's no reason to change a thing that's already set in stone. Ladybug is Paris' savior and with Marinette gone, leaving Nino in her wake he knows he has to step up. He promised her he would.

"The hell you are, what did you do to my Lady?" Chats baton comes out but Nino doesn't reach for the yo-yo at his side he just grips the letter in his hands tighter.

"Ladybug is dead-"

"She isn't!" Chat snaps, he denies it like one would deny the ocean being yellow or the sky red, he denies it because he can't let it be true and Nino, Nino wants to be him. To live in a world— if only for just a few more minutes —of Marinette not being dead. But he can't and neither can Chat.

"Yes she is." Nino presents Chat Noir with the letter, "She left this with me a while back-Marinette-" Chat Noir makes a choking noise and stumble back, and he clutches his stomach as if he's going to be sick, "-She was my best friend and Kim and I-she came to me," Ninos voice broke and tears once more spilled over his face. Chat rested a hand on the metal beam next to himself and steadied himself, "-She said if anything ever happened to her to give you this. Honestly you don't deserve it. Kim says it's not your fault, maman and papa do too, so does Tikki and honestly? Marinette's letter probably says not to blame yourself but I do. I blame you."

Chat looked up at him with a wounded face; "Please," he breaths, "Tell me when you say Marinette-"

"I mean Marinette Dupain-Cheng, the kindest, most amazing best friend who you killed Chat Noir." Chat fell to his knees and not even the sound Kim had let out- not the sobs that had racked Tom Dupain-Chengs body or the scream that had ripped through Sabine -had chilled Nino to the core.

In a flash of green Chat Noir no longer was no longer in front of him; Adrien Agreste was; but Nino couldn't find it within himself to care because Adrien or not— best friend or not —he killed Marinette.

**…**

Nino gives everyone their letter and he reads his letter a dozen and a half time before he has it memorized. Tikki cried at night and honestly so dose Nino.

He takes two and a half weeks off school and Kim takes three; Adrien doesn't drop out— if Nino knows this it's only because Kim takes it upon himself to play messenger between the two new partners —but he's gone a lot longer than either Kim or NIno.

When he comes back he walks up to Ninos locker— it's two down from Marinette's which is littered in flowers and thank you notes because a day after her death the news broke that she was Ladybug —and he looks at Nino.

"I love her," he says it the same way he had claimed she wasn't dead. He doesn't say loved; he says love and Nino, though he doesn't comment on it, catches it.

"You killed her," Nino snaps coldly and Adrien flinches. He hears Tikki snap at him but what does he care if it's the truth.

"I did. I spoke to Plagg, my kwami, once Hawkmoth is gone I'll hand over my miraculous to you."

"Why not now?" Kim could be the next Chat Noir and they could get revenge— Nino knows Tikki would preach justice because they're heros but Nino already knows how he's going to kill Hawkmoth —for Marinette together.

"Because I need claws to rip out Hawkmoths throat, don't I?"

Nino looks at Adrien for a minute, regarding him in a steely manner he never had before and nods.

"Fine, but after—"

"—My miraculous is yours."

**…**

Nino and Tikki and Kim, because as time passes and Hawkmoth doesn't release another akuma, spend time in front of Marinette's headstone. The Ladybug-Chat Noir statue is covered in flowers and candles even two months after her death but her gravesite is theirs to sit at and talk too.

Sometimes Alya would join them, her hand in Ninos and her head pressed against his shoulder but most of the time it was the three of them; Nino and Tikki and Kim.

It's there that Adrien, with flowers— roses and tulips —in his hand finds them. Plagg is perched on his shoulder much like a parrot and flies off to Tikki at the first sight of her.

"What are you doing here Adrien?" Nino asks.

"Master Fu, the guardian, he wants to meet with you—us." Nino sighs and nods, he looks at Kim and the pair of them help the other, Kim taps Tikki on the head and hugs Nino as tight as possible and Nino doesn't say anything because he knows Kim thinks he never gave Marinette enough hugs.

Never told her how great she was enough, never said thank you or smiled or made sure she knew how loved she was enough.

Nino knows Kim knows he's going to die one of these days, left behind by the both of them and Nino knows Kim is clinging to him, hoping that somehow he can stop it from happening. But both boys know he can't; death always gets his due.

**…**

Master Fu is a tiny man, he reaches Ninos solar plexus and he runs a massage parlor in the chinese districts of Paris and he hates Nino. Or at least that's the vibe Nino gets from him because when Adrien and Nino sit down across from master Fu the old turtle's first request was that he hand over the earrings. Both Nino and Adiren are suited up and maybe it's dumb to be suited up inside but he gets it—what Marinette always said about Ladybug confidence.

"Excuse me?" Nino asks.

"I'm asking you to hand over the ladybug miraculous, Marinette had no right to hand them over to a successor." Nino sees ladybug red.

"It wasn't her right? It wasn't—go fuck yourself old man!" Nino spits, in a flash of pink the suit is gone and Tikki is glaring at Fu. "It wasn't Marinettes right to die before having her first kiss, or going on a date or before proving she was the best fashion designer in the world but you saddled her with this giant fucking responsibility at fourteen and you know what? It almost crushed her to death, the weight of the responsibilities? constantly having to be positive, and save Paris and be perfect kind of attitudes nearly destroyed her!"

"She let you know who she was?" Fu sounds almost scandalized and Nino realized that no matter how many times Marinette had insisted Kim and Nino couldn't know who the guardian was for his protection it was because she hadn't told him that they knew. Fu opens his mouth again only for Adrien to cut him off seething.

"Don't you dare," Adrien spits, his eyes narrowed and ears pressed back, "Say you're disappointed in Marinette. Don't." _I dare you_ isn't said but it's there, hanging over the three of them.

Both boys stand up and Fu does too.

"You and Marinette were given two jobs, stop Hawkmoth and keep your identities hidden."

"And I'm glad she didn't!" Chat moves between Nino and Fu, shielding Nino from the old man, "If she had where would we be? Marinette would be dead, the earrings buried with her-I would have no idea what happened to her." He still doesn't; no one will tell him how she died just that she had, that after one battle she had passed and there was nothing he could have done but yet, according to Nino was still somehow his fault.

"The earrings would be safe."

"Because you would have done the same thing to Marinette as you did to Benjamin," Tikki cried, "Wouldn't you've?" Fu turns his head as if he'd been struck. Nino and Adrien don't know what Fu had done to Benjamin, Nino knows that Benjamin had been the English Ladybug before Marinette, that during World War Two he and his Chat Noir had died just after saving the world from some crazy magic wielding Nazi but Nino could feel it in his gut; if Fu had done whatever he'd done on Benjamin to Marinette Nino would kill him and bury him under the bakery without a second thought.

"Tikki-"

"No! You said the same things about Benjamin, that he didn't deserve the miraculous, that he let himself and Kathrine get captured and die-that he was foolish! Because that makes you feel better, you can pretend it wasn't your fault that he and Marinette died, that none of that lays on your shoulders because they were fools—"

"—Tikki—"

"They were children! Babies! And I loved them, they were my bugs and they're gone now." And Tikki weeps. she settled on Nino's shoulder and cries. Nino squares his shoulders.

"Marinette's last words were that I protect the city and Tikki and if that means protecting them from you and Hawkmoth than bring it on." Fu goes to take a step forward but Chat, with his baton out presses it firmly against Fus chest.

"Try it, I dare you," and Adrien says it like a man with nothing else to lose. And maybe he doesn't have anything else to lose; Marinette is dead and the world is worse for it.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this based off headcannons from my mlb blof @bannananorie


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